The Spiders from Mars

The Spiders from Mars
Genres	Rock, glam rock, hard rock
Years active	1970–1973, 1975–1976
Labels	Castle Music Ltd.
Past members	Mick Ronson Trevor Bolder Mick Woodmansey Mike Garson Dave Black Pete McDonald

The Spiders from Mars were rock singer David Bowie's backing band in the early 1970s, and consisted of Mick Ronson on guitars, Trevor Bolder on bass guitar, and Mick Woodmansey on drums.

The group had its origins in Bowie's earlier backing outfit the Hype, which featured Ronson and Woodmansey, but Tony Visconti on bass. They were briefly signed as a band on its own, known as Ronno. With Bolder taking over bass, they were subsequently named via the landmark 1972 Bowie concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and were billed as such on the accompanying large-scale Ziggy Stardust Tour. They were present again on Bowie's 1973 album Aladdin Sane. Another leg of the tour followed that year, with the final show captured in the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

The group joined Bowie in the theatrical style of the material's presentation. Ronson's guitar and arranging during the Spiders from Mars era not only fit into this style, but also provided much of the underpinning for later punk rock musicians.

In 1975 Bolder and Woodmansey reformed the band without Ronson, and were joined in this lineup by Mike Garson, Dave Black, and Pete McDonald. Their self-titled album, released in 1976, was their only album before the group disbanded.

The name came from the famous UFO sighting where a stadium crowd thought they had witnessed Martian spacecraft which turned out to be migrating spiders and not from the Martian areographic features often labelled as 'spiders' and 'baby spiders.'